Monday, June 25, 2007

Good news! The doctor has okayed me to go SCUBA diving, and I think I've almost convinced Mrs. Nator to let me do it. Keep those WooOOOnnns coming!

In other news, I still have to clean the entire house tomorrow. That's over 1100 square feet of cat fur, kitty litter dust and highway grit. And that doesn't even count the de-pornifying. I love my mother-in-law and we get along famously, but damn.

Have I mentioned the new bed is HUGE? The cats still haven't figured out a way to get up on it.

Well, we done dood it. We finally got a new bed. King size, in fact. Simmons firm plush top, so it's steady with all those little coils, but the top gives.

It is HYOOOOGE. Like, I have to hop up to get my butt on it, and my legs dangle way off the ground. It's not a California King, because apparently 1-800-MATTRES leaves those on the West Coast, along with leaving off the last S for Savings. I think it will accommodate Mrs. Nator in all her lengthy glory, however. She can make up the couple inches of length by lying more diagonally.

Spending the money was scary, but with both of our backs giving out at times, it had to be done. Now we just have to try to keep the cats away from it, other than when we're in it. They're traumatized enough already by the movers schlepping it in. Anyone know how to rig up a boat horn to a pressure-sensitive mattres(s) pad?

Happy Pride

I guess. I dunno. I am so old and nest-y, I can't be bothered. Do I really want to sweat for hours watching a parade and then wander around trying to find a place to get a drink? No.

Wish Me Luck

on two things coming up. The first is today, when I have my exam to see if it's okay for me to take a beginning SCUBA class. I really want to take one in Hawaii. However, since I fat, lazy, on prescription drugs and have had spinal surgery, I have to get the okay from my doctor. I'll also be getting a blood test to make sure I got my measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations, because I have to verify that before I register for classes. I'm not worried about that, though. I just want my doctor to look at the SCUBA form while I'm there and tell me I'm healthy enough to do it. WoooOOOOnnns, please!

The second is cleaning for my mother-in-law's visit. She's coming on Wednesday, and thus far, I have been having a hard time getting my ass in gear. It's just pure procrastination stemming from feeling overwhelmed at how grubby this place is. There's no cure for my laziness long-term, I suspect, but a little boost of WoooOOOnns for one task couldn't hurt.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

As part of my loan search activities, I signed up on a whim for collegboard.com's SAT question of the day. I figured I would limber up my mind a little bit and see how rusty it's gotten. You can imagine, then, the sudden sweat I break into on seeing answers like this:

Suppose that x quarts of the final mixture of dye will be made. Since it is to be made from equal amounts of orange and green dye, it will consist of 1 over 2x quarts of orange dye and 1 over 2x quarts of green dye. Since the orange dye has 2 parts yellow dye for each 5 parts total dye, 2 over 5 of it is yellow dye. Similarly, 1 over 3 of the green dye is yellow dye. The amount of yellow in the final mixture is given by
(2 over 5)(1 over 2)x + (1 over 3)(1 over 2)x = 1 over 5x + 1 over 6x
= 11 over 30x quarts

Yeah.

In my defense, only 30% of answerers got this question correct, and it was labeled as "hard." That said, I'm nervous. I thought I'd taken calculus in high school and that would get me out of the pre-calc requirement for the vet tech program. Alas, when I received my transcript, it showed I'd taken trig, and done rather badly at it. (Now that I remember, I used to get into ceaseless arguments with the Russian teacher, because I usually got the right answers, but in a complete bass-ackwards way.) Balls.

It's become worrisome enough that I've started having dreams about it. Last night I was back in college, and couldn't find anything. I had a math class to go to, and while the teacher and classmates were very nice, I'd missed the first class, didn't have the book and was so tired I couldn't concentrate at all. Then I proceeded to wander around campus in what seemed to be a partially-open hospital gown, revealing my ass to all, unable to figure out where I was supposed to be going or where any of my friends were at lunchtime. Curiously, however, it wasn't all panic and exhaustion. I was actually still fairly happy to be blundering about at school, and particularly happy that I'd been assigned a small room to myself with a bed and desk in it in a dorm, where I could nap and study to my heart's content. Strange.

Of course, when I go back to school, I won't have such a room. But I doubt I'll be wearing an actual hospital gown, either.

And the good news is, I still do quite well on the verbal questions. Haven't missed one yet.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The hotel on the right is where will be staying in less than a month, my friends. See all that beautiful bright blue water with brownish bits in it all around? That's prime snorkeling reef, with gorgeous fish, coral of several kinds and a family of placid green turtles.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

I am terrible at being a criminal. Sure, I sneaked liquor from my parents' cabinet a couple times. I went to a lot of clubs when I was underage and drank and did other illegal substances. But all of those were pretty much given to me for being pretty (shut up - I was back then!) and didn't require a whole lot of effort on my part. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was that lack of effort that left half the Haitian drug dealers in late 1980s Manhattan with blue balls. Poor Haitian drug dealers. Hi-yo!

Anyway, my point is, my life of crime has been negligible. There was the time when I was working three student jobs to get through college that I'd sometimes under report the earnings at the student lounge/pool hall by a couple dollars, so I could get a juice and some crackers from the vending machine for lunch. Horrors! The thing was, I felt terribly guilty and I like I was going to get caught every time. I knew that I was fortunate in that I appeared to be the last person anyone would suspect of stealing: a small, shy, lower-middle-class white girl with good manners and a semi-midwestern accent (my parents hailed from out there, even if I was raised in New Jersey). Of course, many teenage girls will tell you that's why they know they'll never get caught. But I genuinely hated doing it and thought I was a terrible person the whole time. Plus, above and beyond that, I was always waiting for The Man to catch me and stomp me down with the iron-heeled boot of justice. "I have terrible luck and am a terrible liar, and therefore, if anyone gets caught, it will be me," was my reasoning. It still echoes today.

Thus, standing by the line for the Rufus Wainwright show trying to sell my tickets was an alarming affair. It didn't matter that there was a geeky-looking kid of maybe 15 or 16 beside me who'd bought his tickets at the original rate of $40, and was trying to sell them for over $200, while I wasn't even hoping to break even on the $220 Mrs. Nator had spent on seats in the same section via eBay. The whole time I was sweating, and waiting to be accosted by the ginourmous bouncer at the front of the line.

Even getting to the place was surreal. It being one of those sudden summer weekends in New York where five million events were going on at once, the subways were full of a mix of rainbow-bedecked Brooklyn Pride goers, Puerto Rican flag draped Boriquas making their way home from the PR parade, and blonde tourist families in matching sneakers and golf shirts whispering to each other "Daddy, is that man speaking Hispanic? And why is that fat lesbian sweating like she's been caught in Singapore customs with a condom full of crank up her ass?"

Outside of the subway was more weirdness. Hordes of people surrounded food tents in Madison Square Park, supervised by far too many irritated-looking police than I wanted to see at that juncture. Then, just as I was drawing up to the venue, a mob of bedraggled bicyclists came barreling down 23rd Street, taking up the lanes with everything from tiny foldable bikes to weird, double-cranksetted contraptions about eight or nine feet high. This did nothing, I assure you, to make me feel more comfortable.

I suppose I could have imagined that, what with all this going on, little old me trying to sell a couple of tickets would hardly be on major law enforcement's radar. I also must confess that, in actuality, I'm not even sure this whole deal was illegal at all. Still, the first pair of gays that talked me down to $110 for the pair got the tickets, because I just wanted to get the hell out of there. (I just know the kid beside me was grateful to see me go. There was no way he was going to make a profit with the weenie with the air of desperation throwing better tickets than he had at people at a loss.) Besides, I had to get back to Brooklyn to get a quart of Italian ice and Mrs. Nator's anti-inflammatory prescription before the stores closed.

As I made my way home, circumnavigating stocky women plastered with Puerto Rico stickers and Gay Pride buttons and sniffing the rare sea-tang in the air from a front blowing in, I took stock. I got $110 for the tickets, half of what we paid for them, and $60 of which were blown on frozen desserts and medications within 20 minutes. Not so great a deal. If I had hung in there, no doubt I could have made a lot more. Ah, but the relief from fearing that I was going to get hauled in and ass-raped in the hoosegow? Priceless.

I could use it. The title of this post, in it's twisted way, refers to a song by Chaka Khan and Rufus, and I thought of it because we have 2 tickets to the Rufus Wainwright concert tonight that we can't use. Mrs. Nator's back is out again, and not only is she in pain, but she's heartbroken that she can't go. We also spent a lot of money on those tickets!

Anyone know anyone who might want to buy them? Or has anyone ever tried selling tickets outside a theatre? I don't know the legalities or procedure for it, but with our finances the way they are, I'm willing to try...

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Case in point, our female turtle, Edamame. By all general measures, she has thrived. She has grown to large, may we say giant-ass, proportions, has her own 90 gallon tank (since she evicted Aubergine, the boy turtle, by repeatedly biting chunks out of his butt), a nice, hard shell, a good diet, etc. But the one thing she will not do is lay eggs.

"But Nator," you ask, "why should that turtle lay eggs if she doesn't want to, much less hasn't even been fertilized by a male turtle?" Well, I'll tell you, you ignorant slut. Like chickens, lady turtles produce eggs whether they are fertilized are not. Also like chickens, they like a dry, warm place to lay their eggs. Unfortunately, unlike chickens, lady turtles spend most of their time swimming in water, or basking on hard surfaces. In the wild, they would find a patch of loose dirt or sand not far from their pond, dig down a ways and let 'er rip. But in a captive environment, you need to furnish them with some sort of nesting area, because if they don't lay, the eggs get all calcified and hard inside the lady turtle, taking up space where, say, lady turtle organs should be. Not good.

In our case, constructing some kind of land/water hybrid terrarium was an overwhelming prospect. So, we figured we'd do as some other folks do and get Ms. Eddie a box full of loose earth where she could spend some quiet time laying her eggs. Of course, it can't just be any box of dirt. It's got to be big enough to hold her giant ass and then some, so she can turn around, and full of enough loose dirt that she can dig down all the way the length of her giant-ass shell. And the dirt has to be the right texture, plus free of outside organisms that might put an indoor-raised turtle's immune system into a frenzy, so you have to buy some kind of special amphibian dirt from the pet store. The most common and economical kind is not really dirt at all, but blocks of dehydrated coconut husks, which you soak in water and then dry out to form a loose, dirt-ish, fibrous substance that turtles can dig in. And that's what we done done. Done dood. Whatever.

The problem is, Eddie hates it. She doesn't like being taken out of her tank (and her giant ass is matched by a giant, bitey mouth on the other end), she doesn't like going in the box, she doesn't like the coconut husks and she most certainly doesn't like staying in the box. So, rather than relaxing and laying her eggs, Ms. Eddie tries repeatedly to escape, almost succeeding, until we put something heavy on the top of it. She then gets quiet - ominously quiet - until you think something's wrong in there, like she suffocated herself or something. So you go and check on her and she just glares at you, like she is the most abused creature ever and you are the worst being in the world. Then if you seal her up again she tries to escape some more, until you give up, rinse the coating of coconut husks off her and put her back in her tank. Results? No eggs, no how, no doin'.

Also? After a few days sitting around? Rehydrated coconuts husks smell.

Meanwhile, Aubergine has just gotten used to having her big tank to cavort in (where he's gotten play time, since he's normally confined to the small tank, away from her bitey mouth), but now you have to go scoop him out and confine him again, making him fear you like the giant, mammalian, probable turtle-eater that you are. All in all, you are a Bad Mommy, and whenever the turtles get to the turtle afterlife, they're going to tell on you to St. Peter or St. Francis or the Keymaster of Gozer or whoever and generally make sure you become a shish kabob when you arrive, yourself.

But, there's nothing for it. For now, we have to keep on trying, to see if maybe she gets used to it eventually and squirts out some huevos. If that doesn't happen, at some point we will have to haul her into an "exotic" specialist vet to get some x-rays taken, to make sure that she hasn't gotten impacted. And if she has? Extremely expensive and risky turtle surgery, or probable death. Hooray!

So all y'all out there who feel for critters, please send us wooOOOOoons of egg-laying, now and then, to encourage Ms. Eddie to freakin' save her own life. We hate to scare her by putting her in the box - fear is not good for turtles' immune systems, either - but we don't have much choice.

Unless anyone out there has a nice, clean home pond they'd want some turtles for? Anyone? Bueller...?

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Being a lesbian housewife isn't that hard, really. Oh, sure, you have to do a little cleaning, some shopping, make the dinners, and clean up after the cats... the many, many cats... but it's really not as difficult as I expected. I think the key thing is that lesbians tend to be very sympathetic to labourers, particularly female domestics. Generally all I have to say to the Mrs. if I haven't gotten anything done that day is that I had cramps, or was contemplating my spiritual place in the universe, or I suddenly realized the cats were going to die someday, and it's "there, there" and a drink and a rubdown, when I've lifted nary a finger. It also helps that I have a genetic folding deficiency. If I so much as look at a fitted sheet, my fingers all jump out of their sockets at once. In light of my delicate nature, I rarely have to do more than whimper to get away with being completely useless. However, in case of emergency, I do have my backups: a carefully placed utterance of the word "exploitation," and a simple yet colourful serape. I'm even ready to stand on the kitchen table, holding up a poorly-written sign that says "UNION" if it comes to that.

In actuality I am Doing Things, even if they aren't always obvious. I am reviewing my student loan and admissions paperwork. I am pricing web hosting sites and going over PHP/MySQL tutorials while mulling over the relative merits of full vs. partial-Flash site design. I am even (sort of) "working out" sometimes. Then I am getting overwhelmed by everything and switching gears to peruse the TripAdvisor Hawaii forums or play cell-phone Boggle on the stoop. Hey, somebody's got to keep the stoop warm. This is Brooklyn, you know.